So I don't pay much attention to most of his squawks. But this one momentarily caught my attention.
Of course he doesn't believe Ms.Khan. She's apparently not an asshole. In fact, she's said one of the more wise things anyone has said about the San Bernardino massacre. From an interview at the New York Times:Trump said he didn't believe the shooter's sister, Saira Khan, when she said she couldn't fathom how her brother Syed Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik could've committed the mass shooting. "I probably don't believe the sister," Trump said. "I would go after a lot of people and find out whether or not they knew. ..."
This part bears repeating: "... shame is for people who feel guilty about something." There's no shame in being who we are. Shame accrues for what we do. As far as anyone knows, Syed Farouk's sisters didn't do anything they should not have. They are among his victims. Kudos to the Times for the interview.... the sisters said they were baffled by what had happened. Their brother had seemed happy with his wife and 6-month-old baby, they said. Asked if she felt shame, Ms. Farook said: “I am not ashamed to be Muslim. I am not ashamed to be American either, and I am not ashamed to be Pakistani either. I think shame is for people who feel guilty about something.”
“We’re trying to be helpful with the investigation,” Ms. Farook said. “People want answers and we do as well.”
Nobody likes this, but adults will get used to it. They can't destroy our country; we can only do that to ourselves.... the massacre may presage a bitter new reality. “It’ll gradually dawn on people,” said Bruce Jones, a former United Nations official and the director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, “that we’ll be living for a long time with the possibility of low-level attacks that can never be predicted and can rarely be prevented.”
It's funny how this works as we all get into our automobiles and drive somewhere but know someone might crash into us while they text or momentarily lose control of their vehicle. Our odds are far more likely that will happen than that a terrorist or someone mentally defective will choose where we shop to attack. Both are random and cannot be predicted. For some reason one inspires all kinds of rhetoric and the other we more or less ignore unless it's us or our loved ones.
ReplyDeleteIt's really very easy to disregard the man. A substantive candidate like Jill Stein has received not even a fraction of his press coverage.
ReplyDeleteThat is well put, Jan.
ReplyDeleteI'm still wondering how all the initial eyewitness reports of three white men in paramilitary outfits morphed into a Muslim man and a woman with a new baby, and why they would shoot up a social services office in San Bernardino. Nothing in this story makes even the remotest bit of sense.
ReplyDeleteMike: like you, I continue to feel we don't know quite what was going on in San Bernardino. I wonder whether we'll ever find out.
ReplyDelete